Paen frowned as he dug through his memories. "A statue of a monkey? No, I've never heard of it, let alone being familiar with it."

Caspar pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. "Here is a sketch of it. It's about six inches high, black, made of ebony. Its origins are said to be Chinese, about six hundred years old."

"Ming dynasty," Paen said absently, still poking around in his memories. As far as he could remember, his father never mentioned anything about a monkey statue as a family heirloom. He himself knew every square inch of the castle, and he'd never seen such a statue.

"Yes. How perspicacious of you to know that. Are you familiar with the era?"

"Only in a collateral sense. I am doing some research on a knight in the service of Marco Polo. He was in China during the Ming dynasty. What proof do I have that any of what you're telling me is true?"

Caspar smiled yet again. Paen was starting to get tired of that knowing smile. He felt decidedly out of his depths with the man, and it wasn't a feeling he relished. "I thought you might ask for some proof. I have here"—Caspar pulled out a small leather case, the size to hold a passport—"a document signed by your father, and bearing his seal."

Paen took the document over to where a magnifying light sat on his worktable. He read the document quickly. It simply stated that one Alec Munroe McGregor Scott, of Darmish, Scotland, did swear to provide the lord Oriens or his due representative with the statue known as the Jilin God in exchange for services rendered him. Paen, no stranger to antique parchment, and certainly familiar enough with it to detect modern paper doctored to look old, examined the item closely with the magnifying glass. He went so far as to pull out a small pocket microscope to examine the fiber content of the document, as well as the red wax seal.